Agents: The Extended Edition
by Stormhawk
Summary: A young woman discovers the truth of the Matrix and joins with the agents. Completly extended version of agents. Chapters are to make it easier to read.
1. Default Chapter

Title: Agents: The Extended Edition  
  
Author: Stormhawk  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: Matrix universe and associated characters: Wachowski brothers. ATS universe: co-owned by me and Mordax. Stef: Me Agent Recruitment, shifting, requiring: Me  
  
Word Count: 18670  
  
Summary:  
  
Notes: In the tradition of my hobbit-like god (Peter Jackson) and his LOTR extended editions I am rewriting most of season one ATS to deal with errors, inconsistencies and plot holes. In addition there will be more dialogue and in some cases whole new scenes!  
  
And I have split it into chapters.  
  
Please read and Review. ________________________________________________________________________  
  
Twenty years ago.  
  
It was a beautiful and warm March morning when Emma Mimosa and his sister Pam were having morning tea in Emma's living room. Just across from them, near the door to the kitchen was Emma's two-year-old daughter Stephanie who was running around her crib with her new doll.  
  
She stopped running and held it over the side of the crib to show her mother again. Emma loved her daughter dearly but she was growing tired of having to tell her every ten minutes how pretty her doll was just to keep her happy.  
  
Pam saw her sister's tiredness so she took a turn, "it's a lovely doll Stephanie," he aunt said with a broad smile.  
  
Emma smiled wistfully and turned back to her half-finished cup of coffee when the door was knocked in with one mighty kick. They both stood as a man ran in, "who are you?" she demanded of him.  
  
The man, who was dressed in all black, was one of the rebels. At the moment he had two problems: one was that he was a yellow-bellied coward and the other was that an agent was chasing him. And all the rebels knew what happened if an agent caught you. "Get out of my house!" Emma screamed at him as her right hand flew toward the phone that hung on the wall near the table.  
  
"There's no need to call the police," a controlled and calm voice said as a man in a suit stepped over the fallen door and into the house. Agent Smith drew his Desert Eagle and aimed it at the coward of a rebel.  
  
In a quick movement that surprised everyone else, the rebel plucked Stephanie and her new doll from the crib and held her in front of him like a human shield. He would rather her take the bullet for him if it meant he'd have a chance of survival.  
  
"Get away from me agent! Unless you want to shoot one of your precious batteries." Unperturbed Smith merely adjusted the angle on his gun a little and fired. Emma screamed, thinking her daughter had been shot. Smith turned and looked at them, erasing their memories of the last few minutes and tweaking their code so that they would be unconscious until the clean up crew had done it's job. Both Emma and Pam slumped back down onto their chairs.  
  
Smith almost shook his head, after so many years of doing this he felt as though he could complete the task on autopilot. The coward lay dead on the floor, the bullet had killed him instantly. Stephanie was crying because she was scared and unsure as to what was going on and the shot had been very loud. Or perhaps it was because her new doll was broken, the bullet had passed through it to kill the man.  
  
Smith holstered his gun and looked down at the dead rebel, "you brought this on yourself," he said coldly to the corpse.  
  
Being so young and naive she didn't understand the implications of a dead person. Seeing that the thing that had made all the noise was gone she looked up at him in distaste, "you broke my doll," she said plainly then made a face at him.  
  
Smith had suppress a smile, his job would be a lot easier if the rebels were this entertaining. He knelt on one knee and pried her from the dead man's stiff arms. He rose and then looked down at the damaged beyond repair doll.  
  
He shifted Stephanie in his arms so she was supported on his left arm. With his right he down toward the doll, she watched in amazement as the doll's head ran back together and flew up to him.  
  
Even as young as she was Stephanie knew she had just seen something very special. Satisfied the doll was as good as new he handed it back to her. He pressed his earpiece and called for a cleanup crew for the body.  
  
The mental proof had been erased from the adults but there was no need to erase the child's memories.  
  
Humans never remembered anything from their infancy.  
  
The child was covered in blood that had splattered onto her from the dead rebel. He deposited the happy again child back in her crib and required a wet washcloth. He started to wipe the blood off her.  
  
As he cleaned the already drying blood from her she repeatedly tried to pull his sunglasses off. "You're not as viral as the rest of your species yet," as he looked at the cute baby, "shame you'll probably become a rebel when you grow up and I'll have to kill you."  
  
Agent Brown arrived with the clean up crew. As he walked in Smith wiped the smiled from his face and tried to look as though he hadn't been enjoying the child's company but Brown had seen a remnant of it. He tried to dismiss it, Smith was his superior but he detested humans in all their forms and so human-like behavior no matter how slight was a sign of weakness and imperfection.  
  
Later that night.  
  
"Mum? What happened to the angel?" Stephanie asked her mother as she was tucking her in after finishing the traditional bedtime story that unless one of them were very sick was never skipped. Emma needed sleep, for some reason she was very tired and had a slight headache.  
  
"What angel Stephanie?" The last thing she needed at the moment was to play twenty questions with a two-year-old.  
  
"The angel that fixed my doll," Stef said it like it was supposed to be common knowledge. Emma looked at her daughter in confusion; the grizzly Mr. Johnson who worked at the doll hospital was anyone's last idea of what an angel would look like.  
  
"There was no angel," Emma said as she handed the doll to her, "Your doll is fine."  
  
"Only cause he fixed it. Didn't you see him or the other man?"  
  
"What other man?" Emma's head flared in pain, she just wished Stef would go to sleep.  
  
"Mean. He made the angel break my doll."  
  
"I thought the angel fixed your doll."  
  
"He did, after he broke it."  
  
"Well Stephanie what did this angel look like?" Emma asked, expecting to hear about white robes and halos.  
  
"Suit like Uncle Fred. And sunglasses and a gun."  
  
Stef's 'uncle' Fred was Pam's current boyfriend. Fred was a lawyer. "An angel in a business suit that carries a gun?" Emma inquired wondering if two was too young to start therapy.  
  
"Yes mum. It make a big boom."  
  
"Stef. Go to sleep."  
  
Twenty years later. The present.  
  
"What the hell is so hard about spelling my name the right way?" Stef Mimosa mumbled to herself as she flipped through her mail on the way back to her apartment. She had shortened her name to Stef, thinking Stephanie was a little old fashioned. And it was always spelt with an 'f' and never a 'ph'. Mostly people got it right, it was just Mr. Jenkins who insisted on spelling her name with a 'ph', the man was in his sixties so she could forgive him on that basis.  
  
Locking her door she pinned the bills on her notice board in the kitchen, grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and went straight back into her room.  
  
She'd been living there since she moved out of home four, almost five years now. She'd moved out when she was seventeen, with no complaints from her aunt. Having no contact since she wondered if the woman who had raised her for nine years even remembered she was alive.  
  
Then again, she had half raised herself, Pam had been busy with many a party, social occasion and gentlemen caller. Living the high life that was demanded of their status. At least according to Pam they were a high- standing family. What was left of it anyway, the Henderson's money had almost run out. (Her aunt and her mother were born Henderson's; she was a Mimosa because of her father.)  
  
Pam had taken her in because her mother had died of cancer when she was eight.  
  
It had been old money, made in the early days of the family. There was still enough, that she was glad of. Namely her inheritance. Her grandparents had arranged it before they died, and put into a trust fund. It had been just over ten thousand dollars.  
  
That may sound like a lot of money but with bills and rent to consider it really wasn't much. There was little over two thousand left. Mostly she used it to pay the rent, her work paid for everything else.  
  
Not that she did an actual job that involved being employed by a business or company. Her job involved a lot of sitting behind her computer. That she loved, she loved being able to immerse herself into the computer and the world of the net. There was nothing wrong with being connected about half the day and doing offline work the rest of time, except what was required to sleep, eat, shop or other necessities.  
  
Stef wasn't a hacker, she was a webhunter. Someone who would scourer the internet (and private databases) for information or facts that a client needed. It could be a simple order like students too busy or too unfamiliar with the net to look for information for assignments. Other clients used her like a private detective, having her sift through virtual paper trails to look for someone.  
  
It paid well enough, she always had enough, always had a roof over her head and the lights on. And it was the only thing she felt she was good at. There was nothing better than the feeling of being plugged in.  
  
Her net connected and her Yahoo mail account opened up. 'Welcome Unseen Spyder' it said, she felt comfortable by either of her two names. Not that many others besides those hooked up ever used them. The most human contact she had had in months, or that matter years, was when she went shopping and made idle chitchat with the clerks.  
  
Humanity sucked.  
  
An odd thought for a human but a true enough one.  
  
There were several webhunting jobs lined up. A couple of author alerts for stories on Fanfiction.net, junk mail and some quick notes (and a couple of viruses) from some hackers she knew.  
  
Viruses between hackers (or hunters) were like jokes for the rest of the net community, something you sent when you didn't want that person to feel alone in the world, but not something that required a reply.  
  
"Shit," she cried as a pain struck her head. Holding her head, she hoped the pain would pass quickly. They were really irritating her, the headaches.  
  
They had started a few weeks ago and hadn't given up. They would come and go, and no painkillers she took helped.  
  
Unable to focus on the screen in front of her, she crashed the computer and fell over onto her bed, which was easy because it was right next to it. With the heavy curtains drawn, and the door closed, it was dark like night.  
  
Closing her eyes, she fell asleep on the cool sheets.  
  
A couple of hours later she felt a lot better. Rising, she felt hungry. As she walked out to the kitchen her eyes passed on the calendar. Oh, so that's what day it was. She had thought today was something special, just couldn't remember what.  
  
Opening the fridge she pulled out a small white box. The bakery in this neighborhood made nice cakes. And since it wasn't right to make your own birthday cake she had walked down and bought one for herself.  
  
Writing hadn't cost anything extra so it had '22' written in blue icing on chocolate frosting. Chocolate on chocolate, her favorite.  
  
She slipped the cake from the box onto a dinner plate, took a knife and carried it over to the dining room table. Birthdays weren't any harder than any other day of the year, and being alone had never bothered her.  
  
Cutting a slice, she almost considered singing 'happy birthday' to herself, but there wasn't much point in that. No one would hear her. She put the cake back down on the plate, stood and looked around the room.  
  
"Do I even exist?" she asked the world at large. "Well, answer me."  
  
No one answered.  
  
"I need an answer," she said as if admitting something that would make her weak.  
  
Sitting back down, Stef chided herself. She knew she existed, and that would have to be enough.  
  
Maybe it was time to do something else, maybe go to college. Spend more time outside her apartment.  
  
Or maybe she could stay here and die.  
  
She loved her life, no one bothered her, no one controlled her. She loved her life on the Internet. She didn't need anyone else.  
  
That was perhaps the source of the problem; it was always 'no one'.  
  
No one would care if she died, if her headaches were something serious. If was a tumor or something and she died no one would care. No one would notice. It wasn't so bad, it wasn't like she'd be missed or miss anyone.  
  
She finished her slice of cake, stashed the rest back into the fridge and went back to her computer.  
  
*****  
  
"Morpheus, good to see you," the Oracle said as the bald rebel walked into the kitchen.  
  
"You told me you needed to talk to me."  
  
"Yes, I did," she said as she pushed the cookie barrel over to him. He declined.  
  
"What about?"  
  
"There's someone you need to find."  
  
"Who? We have potentials looking all the time."  
  
"No, this one is different. She's not looking for you, specifically, the truth maybe, but you'll never find her."  
  
"We can find anyone, is this potential part of the prophecy?"  
  
"No Morpheus, not everyone is part of the prophecy."  
  
"Then why?"  
  
"Do you trust me enough to look?"  
  
"Of course we do, you've helped us so much."  
  
"The name is Unseen Spyder, and I want you to send her this message," she said handing him a slip of paper.  
  
"I'll do my best," he said bowing his head and leaving.  
  
*****  
  
Stef was in a better mood the next day, the amount of sugar she had ingested at one in the morning may have had something to do with that. There was none of the self-doubt there had been the night before, and none of the angst.  
  
She was herself again.  
  
Microwaving a bowl of popcorn, she got dressed into a pair of loose jeans and a long tee shirt and flopped on the couch to watch a movie.  
  
After it finished, she dialed up and got most of the webhunting orders finished for the day. Sending off messages to the clients and her bank details she just sat back and waited for the money to be transferred to her bank account. Payment before information that was her motto.  
  
As was the motto of all true webhunters, of which there really wasn't that many. There were a couple of others she knew in various parts of the country, and a couple of international ones. The only other one she knew of in the city was some guy named G'Mork, or GMork_the_hunter, as his email stated.  
  
He was good, not as good as her but good enough for some of her clients to transfer to him, because he had cheaper rates. He probably didn't pay the bills with what he did. He covered his tracks well, and she couldn't find anything out about his offline life.  
  
For all she knew, G'Mork could be an eight-five year old woman living in a cardboard box. Not that that was likely but the idea made her smile.  
  
Seeing no money was coming in straight away, she got up to make dinner. Not that she was a gourmet chef but she could cook what she liked to eat.  
  
Tonight, all she felt like was a peanut butter sandwich.  
  
She turned on the kitchen CD player, and took her sandwich out to the tiny balcony. But as she did her eyes caught onto Alexandria who was in the lounge room on a bookshelf as always.  
  
Alexandria stared at her from her one eye, her one lifeless eye. The other side of her skull had been broken long ago.  
  
Alexandria was a doll.  
  
"Don't give me that look Alexandria," Stef said to the doll. When she had first gotten the doll she'd been unable to pronounce the name correctly so it had been 'lexandwa', she had been Stef's favorite doll until it had been broken.  
  
The day Jack, her father, had stomped out of her life he had stood on the doll's head and never even looked back. Jerk.  
  
And the angel hadn't come back to fix it.  
  
"Oh shut up about that Stef," she said to herself. She couldn't believe that still believed she had seen an angel twenty years ago. How the hell was anyone supposed to remember things coherently from that long ago? They didn't. And she was stupid for believing in a thing like an angel. Angels didn't exist, god didn't exist, there was nothing beyond the world that everyone saw.  
  
Was there?  
  
But, she realized as she started to eat her sandwich while overlooking the city. It was still nice on some level to believe that something special like that had happened.  
  
It would be so nice to know that there was someone out there that was looking after her.  
  
She slowly ate the rest of her sandwich as she watched the little lights of the city go out. Not that you got a great view from a third-floor apartment, but those who had lived there their whole lives knew when 'the city that never sleeps' was going to bed.  
  
That was her cue to go back to her computer.  
  
Hopping back onto the net, she jumped over to her site, 'The Spyder's Lair', which had no point, just links to stuff she liked and details on her skills as a webhunter. Though, when she jumped into the guest book she found a new message.  
  
Whoever had placed it was obviously playing a joke; the name read 'Trinity'.  
  
Everyone knew that Trinity was a world-class hacker, what the hell would someone like her.or was it him.no one knew for they were good at covering their tracks, want with a webhunter like her?  
  
Stef clicked it and opened up the message. She was disappointed, it was only a riddle.  
  
"Is this the truth or.or wills c real. Find it to find the truth." She read out loud. She clicked to delete it but something stopped her. Trinity, if this message was really from Trinity, had ties to this mysterious underground hacker movement; they apparently left clues and only those who were smart enough found the truth.  
  
The Truth.  
  
Something about those words resonated in her. The Matrix. The Truth. Maybe they had answers.  
  
But she had to find the answer to the riddle first.  
  
She tried running it through some online translators, but nothing came out that made sense. She knew it was the last part of the message that was the important part. Reading into it, it could mean something to the nature of you had to have a will to see what was real and what wasn't.  
  
"Damn you," she cursed at the computer. She was on the verge of giving it up so she jumped over to a forum she haunted. The last thread that had been replied to was 'Sorry I'm Late' she clicked over to read it. One of the administrators did a rambling apology about something or other and ended his post with a screen cap of the Disney 'Alice in Wonderland.'  
  
Realization dawned over her as she realized what the message meant. Somehow it came to her within an instant, the translation was Lewis Carroll.  
  
Why that was she had no idea, but it was the answer to the riddle.  
  
She jumped back over to her lair and send off a reply to the mysterious person.  
  
About an hour later, she dropped off to sleep.  
  
The next morning she woke to someone incessantly knocking at her door.  
  
Dragging herself out she undid the locks and looked blearily at.a FedEx deliveryman.  
  
"Can I help you?"  
  
He smiled a nice false smile, something that made her want to punch him.  
  
"Stef Mimosa?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Package for you," he handed her a clipboard. "Sign here." She grumbled something unintelligible and signed her name on the dotted line. He smiled again and handed her a package.  
  
She slammed the door behind him and dumped the package on the table. She tipped some coffee granules into a cup, "must have caffeine," she muttered as she turned the kettle on.  
  
The package rung.  
  
She looked back at it, "no, that didn't happen," she said shaking her head.  
  
It rang again. Tearing it open she pulled out a cell phone. As a side note it was an expensive cell phone. She answered it.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Unseen Spyder?" a man's voice asked on the other end.  
  
"Who is this?"  
  
"Unseen, this is the reply to you answer to the riddle."  
  
"You can call me Stef," she said quietly, "is this Trinity?"  
  
The man laughed, and following the Wonderland theme she thought of the creepy cat. "No, my name is Morpheus."  
  
"I've heard of you," she said in wonder, Morpheus had even more underground fame than Trinity did.  
  
"That's good to hear. I understand you are looking for answers."  
  
For lack of a coherent sentence, she just answered "yes."  
  
"I can give you those answers. Will you meet with me?"  
  
"Just name the place."  
  
"A friend of mine will meet you on the corner of River and Dale."  
  
"When?"  
  
"Nine o'clock tonight, can you make it?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Then I shall say goodbye." The call died in her ear, and she put the phone down on her table. She wasn't sure what to do, most hackers waited their entire online lives for a call like this, she had heard about 'contacts' like this. And she had been contacted by Morpheus and Trinity, whatever she had done to deserve this was she glad of.  
  
Nine pm, which was about eleven hours.  
  
Nothing would be the same after that. 


	2. Chapter 2

River and Dale was about a fifteen minute walk so she left about eight- thirty just so she could be there in time. She paused and looked at herself in the mirror wondering if she was what they were expecting.  
  
She wasn't tall, only five foot five. Her short brown hair never came past her shoulder, it was short enough not to give her any trouble. She looked at her blue-gray eyes for a moment, they betrayed to her the combination of excitement and doubt she was feeling. She really had no idea what to expect or what she was walking into.  
  
But then again, she could handle herself. That was one thing she had always been able to do.  
  
She locked the door of the apartment and walked off to her meeting.  
  
She stood as inconspicuously as she could as she waited on the corner. There was no sign of anyone and the streets of New York are dangerous for anyone after dark.  
  
She jumped when someone tapped her on the shoulder, almost screaming she whirled around. A woman in a long black leather coat was there.  
  
"Unseen?" she asked quietly.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"My name is Trinity. Come with me," she said as she turned and walked past her and around the corner. It was only a short walk and they came to an old hotel. They walked up to the fourth floor and stopped outside an impressive set of doors.  
  
"Through that door is the answer to all the questions you have. Still want to know the truth?" Trinity asked her seriously.  
  
Stef nodded and Trinity opened the door for her, Stef took a deep breath and stepped through.  
  
A tall black man in a long coat stood waiting for her near two old red chairs. He smiled down at her, Welcome, Unseen. As you no doubt have guessed, I am Morpheus."  
  
She shook his hand; "it's an honor to meet you. And you can call me Stef."  
  
"We are who we choose to be," he relented, though preferring that potentials call themselves by their hacker alias'. He smiled again, "I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole? Do you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes Stef?"  
  
"Yes," she said as he sat and nodded for her to do the same.  
  
"I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of someone who accepts what she sees because she is expecting to wake up."  
  
"Wake up from what?"  
  
"The Matrix."  
  
"What is it? What is the Matrix?"  
  
"The Matrix is that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you here."  
  
"But what is it?" She asked again. 'Something wrong with the world' wouldn't have been the phrase she used. She knew there was a truth that she didn't know but hadn't felt it to be...wrong.  
  
"The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that the machines have been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."  
  
Ok...now it was getting strange.  
  
She wasn't quite as at ease as she had been when she first walked into the room. It sounded like he was trying to find a philosophical way to describe virtual reality.  
  
But before she could ask if that was what he meant he started talking again.  
  
"The truth of the matter is, that you are a slave, Stef. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage...kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. This is not the real world."  
  
WHAT?  
  
She sat very still while listening to him. There was something creepy about him. Some spider-sense that was screaming not to trust him.  
  
"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."  
  
Was this why she had come? To find out what the Matrix was?  
  
Yes...somehow that was the answer to the truth she had been seeking.  
  
But she wasn't quite sure that she trusted them.  
  
"How?"  
  
He held out his hands, he held two pills. A red one in his right and a blue one in his left. She hesitated, they were probably to make her believe anything they said.  
  
At least he wasn't rushing her to make a decision, he seemed to be a very patient man. She imagined that he had given this choice to hundreds of people, as his speech had seemed very practiced. Her hand hovered at her side, unsure of which color to pick. But this was what she had been looking for so long. She wasn't going to let it go when they could tell her what was going on.  
  
She reasoned, that if she didn't like what they showed her she could always go home.  
  
She reached for the red pill.  
  
Stef didn't have a chance to grab the pill as she heard a shot and the door to the room they were in was kicked down. There was a body on the floor, one of Morpheus' men who had been guarding the door.  
  
The man who had kicked the door in stepped into the room. He was well- dressed, wearing a suit and sunglasses even though it was night.  
  
"What the hell?" Stef turned back to Morpheus for an answer as to what was going on but he had already fled into the next room away from what she assumed to be some fed. Seeing no choice she ran after him and the man in the suit followed her.  
  
Trinity and whoever else had been in the next room weren't there. Morpheus was standing in the window ready to jump. He took a second to look back at Stef. He screamed "run!" before he jumped from the fourth-story window.  
  
She ran forward to see if they had all jumped to their deaths, if she had almost joined some kind of suicide club she saw, to her infinite surprise, that they were running unharmed down the street away from the building with Trinity screaming something into her cell phone.  
  
The order to run replayed in her head but the command died somewhere between her mind and her legs, she was in too much shock to do anything. The man in the suit walked up to the window, seemingly ignoring her and watched as Morpheus and his crew disappeared from view.  
  
She looked at the man in the suit. She had no idea what was going on but now she was sure she wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it. She backed away from him and ran down the stairs and out onto the street.  
  
As she ran from him, Smith sighed and muttered to himself, "why do they always run?"  
  
Stef looked up toward the fourth floor she ran from the building. Even in the dark she could see that the man was still standing there. Seeing her he stepped from the window and jumped down, landing less than twenty feet from her.  
  
She both saw and heard the concrete snap as he landed. "What the hell are you?" she screamed. He didn't answer, instead he drew his gun.  
  
Holy shit! Her mind screamed, he was going to kill her.  
  
A cold fear washed over her and she wouldn't have been surprised if her skin lost a couple of shades of color.  
  
"You brought this on yourself," he said coldly.  
  
Why did that sound so familiar? She asked herself, she knew she had heard someone say it before.  
  
She felt like she had been struck by lightning as a memory was jolted. She remembered him. "You fixed my doll," she said quickly. She then kicked herself mentally for how utterly childish that statement sounded. Her shaking voice certainly wouldn't have helped.  
  
"What?" he asked with the gun still trained on her. Smith faltered, unsure of what that statement could possibly mean. His filed raced overtime trying to make a connection to that statement that made any kind of sense.  
  
"I was a little kid," she said quickly. "Some guy ran into my house. You...killed him..." she trailed off, realizing that the same thing was probably going to happen to her. "The bullet smashed my doll and then you fixed it."  
  
Smith nodded slightly, he remembered the incident. He could remember everything that had ever happened to him. He smiled to himself, he had been right all that time ago, he did have to kill her.  
  
Keep talking, she ordered herself. Maybe she could talk her way out of this. If he was talking, he wouldn't be shooting. "That guy back then, he's got something to do with Morpheus and those guys didn't he?"  
  
Smith nodded once, "he was one of them."  
  
"I have nothing to do with them. You don't have to kill me," she controlled her voice a little, not wanting to display the fear she was feeling.  
  
He shook his head, "unfortunately you know too much."  
  
"I don't know anything." She could tell it wasn't going in her favor. She had to think of something, anything that would save her life or at the very least give her a fighting chance.  
  
Would it work?  
  
"Behind you!" she screamed.  
  
Smith turned, he had wondered if the rebels would return for her. They never gave up their potentials this easy. He realized he had been tricked when he spun away from her and saw no one. Stef took the mere second of confusion and ran for it. The agent allowed himself a smile as he watched her run into a brick wall that he had required to be there.  
  
She had had her head turned back to watch what he was doing then she had hit something. She took a step back from the brick wall that had appeared from thin air. She knew for certain that it hadn't been there a minute ago.  
  
Morpheus' words came back her, 'this is not the real world.' She turned away from the wall and saw the man running toward her.  
  
Damn, it hadn't worked so now she was going to die. In a vent of pure frustration she punched the wall. An indent the size of her fist was knocked into the solid wall of bricks. She did a double take as she looked from the wall to her fist. She had never done anything like that before.  
  
Being able to punch into a brick wall was her last concern at the moment. One higher up the list was how the wall had appeared there in the first place. Deciding to think about it later and just escape now she ran to go around the wall but three more of the same height appeared and boxed her in.  
  
Her soon-to-be assassin leapt straight over the wall as simple as anyone climbed the stairs and landed right in front of her. This gave her cause to consider if she was in fact going quite insane. She knew for a fact that people could NOT leap over walls that high. The wall was about thirty feet high.  
  
Although it wasn't a nice thought she accepted that she might be dead in a few minutes. If she was going to die she wanted a few answers first.  
  
"How did you do that?" she asked him slowly. He was still holding his gun.  
  
She could almost see him deliberating with himself whether to shoot her or answer her question. Fortunately he chose the first. She let out an enormous sigh of relief as he holstered his gun. "What did they tell you exactly?" he asked her staring at her from behind his sunglasses.  
  
"Nothing precise," she said truthfully. "Something about this not being the real world. He also mentioned something about machines."  
  
"Did you believe it?"  
  
Stef made a strange noise halfway between a snort and a sigh, "I do now. Who are you? What are they?"  
  
"Smith. Agent Smith. And they are the rebels. Would you like to know more?"  
  
This was a good thing. Fatality didn't seem to be in the picture anymore. "If it will keep me alive," she said. Not pointing a gun at her he didn't seem so bad and she still wanted the answers she had come searching for. Simply, she wanted to know what the hell was going on.  
  
What happened next was as unbelievable as the brick wall appearing from nowhere. They were standing in a box of brick walls one moment and the next, she blinked and they were in an office.  
  
Smith sat behind his desk and motioned for her to sit in the empty. "This is not the real world," he said, "you are inside a computer simulation."  
  
She shook her head slowly, he was as insane as the rest but unlike Morpheus who had been interspersing philosophical junk and making it confusing Smith was stating facts.  
  
"What?" was all she could manage.  
  
He saw her expected confusion. "Let me finish. This world, the rebels call it the Matrix, is exactly like the real world used to be like before it started to destroy itself. About two centuries ago it became virtually unlivable and the Matrix was constructed. In here humans can live and flourish whereas in the real world they would simply die."  
  
It really did sound insane but somehow Stef felt that there was some innate truth to it all. She did believe him no matter how fantastic it sounded. And it sounded more truthful coming from him than it did from Morpheus.  
  
Which was strange, as Morpheus and Trinity were names that everyone in the online community knew and trusted. The feds in the suits were the ones that caused you the trouble. Hackers were supposed to be able to trust one another and those who talked to feds were traitors.  
  
She was reconsidering her whole value system because the...rebels as Smith had called them had left her to die without a second thought for her health or safety. Now that was the mark of one not to be trusted.  
  
"Where do you fit into this?" she asked him.  
  
"Agents are..." he took a moment to find the right word. "Guardians simply. Sentient programming but guarding nonetheless. We make sure the Matrix runs smoothly so that its inhabitants may have normal lives."  
  
"You're a program? You are AI?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Cool," she muttered to herself. "What about the rebels?"  
  
"The rebels believe that a life in the real world no matter what to be better simply because it is the truth. The truth is that the real world is dead, all that is left is the Matrix."  
  
Stef sat back in the chair taking it all in, after all it was a lot to process. "What are they trying to accomplish?"  
  
"They wish to destroy the Matrix. If they succeed the majority of the human race will cease to exist." He stated in the same tone he had said everything else in. Stef was confused, why would anyone want to destroy the world that they had grown up in? The rebels sounded like impertinent children rebelling against their parents.  
  
Lost in her own musings Stef become aware that Smith was staring at her. "What are you going to do with me?" She asked unsure of what was going to happen. A large portion of hackers that are found by feds were never heard from again. She wasn't a hacker but she was close enough and had just been associating with what seemed to be some of his organization's top enemies. She didn't want to go to jail. Hopefully she would get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.  
  
"You have two choices Miss Mimosa," he said and she was only slightly surprised that he knew her name. "You can either go back to your normal life with no knowledge of these events. Or...you can work with us to protect your world from the rebels."  
  
She looked up as he said the second option. "Why would programs need help? I saw what you could do. I can't do anything like that."  
  
"There is an inherit limit to our programming that the human mind alone seems to be able to surpass. We take advantage of this the same as the rebels do. I believe you could be trained."  
  
"Okay. Sign me up." It sounded cool to her. She had no idea how cool it was going to turn out to be.  
  
He stood up and walked to the door, she followed out. They walked down a few corridors, past a gym where other recruits were practicing seemingly impossible techniques.  
  
"This is actually possible?" Stef asked him as she looked at two boys who were fighting in midair, defying gravity with ease.  
  
"Yes," he said, all the recruits asked that question.  
  
He opened another door and they walked into what she assumed to be the test area. They probably couldn't recruit anyone without testing them to see if they were worth the trouble. Agent Brown and Agent Jones were already waiting with their own recruits.  
  
Smith joined Jones who had walked over to the side and Brown stood in front of the humans to explain what they needed to do.  
  
"This is the first test," the tall agent, who was the combat agent, stated. "Those who pass it will progress to the next stage. Those who don't will be expelled from the program." Behind him three thirty-foot brick walls appeared.  
  
Well, Stef thought, they look familiar.  
  
"Simply jump over the wall and then jump back over. Begin." The three recruits stepped forward. All of them had seen things recently that they would have considered impossible not that long ago.  
  
Brown's recruit, who was taller than the other two went first. He ran quickly at the wall, jumped fifteen feet straight up and then smashed painfully into the wall. He slipped back down the floor with blood all over his face. He had several small cuts along with his broken nose.  
  
Stef smiled to no one in particular. There was no time like the present. She took three running steps toward her wall, remembering everything about the world being fake and the human mind breaking the rules and launched herself upward. She landed with a dull thud on the other side. Jones' recruit, a boy named Kyle shook his head in determination. He was not going to be beaten by a girl. Especially one that was younger than him.  
  
He jumped up, landed on the top of the wall and back flipped down to the ground, landing near Stef.  
  
"Beat that," he dared her.  
  
Not afraid of any challenge especially now knowing that she was capable of jumping a thirty-foot wall with no trouble whatsoever she smirked at him and replied, "I shall." And she did. She walked back a few more feet so she could get a better run up. She ran at her wall, launched upward, flipped high above the wall and landed on the other side.  
  
It was strange she had realized at the pinnacle of jump. She wasn't afraid of being thirty-five feet in the air. Something she thought was very cool.  
  
Kyle had been beaten, he simply jumped back over the world and refused to look at her. But they both looked down at Brown's recruit who was slowly rising to his feet, holding his bloody nose. Brown looked down without concern and a mild but completely expected disappointment. To him, recruits were a waste of time.  
  
"You failed," were his only two words as he led the ex-recruit out. His memories would simply be erased for there was no sense in wasting a perfectly good battery.  
  
"Congratulations," Jones said to Stef and Kyle. "Follow me to the next stage." The followed him through to the next room, which was even larger than the last. It was a mockup of a part of the city and an exceedingly real mockup at that. Stef looked up to see the moon as well as a few faint stars.  
  
The two recruits were issued weapons. Kyle looked slightly nervous at handling a gun, for he had never held a weapon before. Neither had Stef but she wasn't afraid of it, holstering it immediately after checking the safety was on.  
  
Jones, who was shorter than the other two agents spoke, "keep these for the further stages. In this level you will be partnered with another recruit and patrol the city as if you had already made it through the rest of the tests. In here are simulations of places that rebels are often recruited from."  
  
Two other recruits walked through the door to the room, Stef reasoned that they must have already done the jump test. They split into partners and walked into the simulation. Her partner pointed to a club and they walked in.  
  
"I know a place just like this," he said. He was around her age with light color hair and brown eyes. "Did you ever come to places like this before this happened to you?"  
  
"No, I wasn't very social," Stef understated distractedly while looking around for anyone who looked like a rebel.  
  
He shrugged, "You missed out on a good thing. Clubbing is sweet." He said as his eyes wandered to check out a pretty but very drunken girl to Stef's right. "Makes you wonder if we're doing the right thing," he said in a much quieter voice. Maybe these so called 'rebels' do have a point."  
  
Stef's blue-gray eyes burned coldly at him. "They want to destroy the world. How can that be right?"  
  
He shook his head, matching her glare. "This world is fake. I think I'm..." the next word never made it out of his mouth. Stef had drawn her gun and fired. Her partner fell down as the sound of the gunshot died away. The simulated patrons of the club didn't even turn.  
  
"Why did you do that?" Stef turned and saw Agent Jones standing behind her.  
  
She felt a pang of doubt; maybe she should have just knocked him out. They hadn't actually specified yet what to do once they came in contact with a rebel. It wasn't the fact that she had killed someone that was bothering her, it was the worry that they might wipe her memories and she might not remember any of this.  
  
But she stood by her decision; "he was a traitor. He was agreeing with the rebel's point of view."  
  
The technical agent nodded, "good. You passed."  
  
Stef's eyes grew wide, "passed? Passed what? This was a test?"  
  
"Of course it was," Jones said matter-of-factly. "We had to see where your loyalties lie." The simulated cityscape and the digital people disappeared from around them. Kyle looked up from talking to his partner as the mockup faded.  
  
"Did he pass too?" Stef asked Jones as he walked away.  
  
"No," Jones almost sighed. "He was too indecisive." Jones left the room with Kyle. His partner, to him he had been speaking also disappeared, he had also been a simulation. Though it only peeked through on her impassive face Stef was exceedingly happy with herself. This was the first thing she had ever done in her life with this degree of success.  
  
"Well done," Smith said walking up to her.  
  
She couldn't hold back a smirk, "what's the next stage?"  
  
"It will come soon enough," he said. "Do you know that only one in fifty recruits make it this far?"  
  
"Then that would make me the one," she said with a grin. She had actually accomplished something that a lot of other people had failed. His eyes narrowed at her last two words but she didn't notice.  
  
"And only one in those ten that have made it this far make it though the next stage."  
  
Stef wasn't scared, "I usually don't listen to statistics. More often than not they are wrong."  
  
"Then if you're ready follow me," he said as he turned and walked toward a third door. Without a second of hesitation she followed him through. This level was clearly a fighting simulator. A dozen SWAT team members and a few people dressed like rebels were facing her, all frozen as if they were on paused.  
  
That was until Smith said "Begin."  
  
Stef gulped, obviously all these programs were going to try and kill her. That became obvious as some of the SWAT guys knelt and started to fire. This was something new, and she had never been a very good fighter.  
  
This was going to take some skill and some luck. Luck not being her strong point she decided just to go for it. Pushing all her fear and doubt out she gripped her gun and focussed on what she needed to do.  
  
As she focussed it was almost as if the world slowed a little. She aimed at the closest SWAT and fired, the bullet went through his goggles and he fell back. That had worked well enough but now she had the rest to deal with.  
  
Not taking notice of the fear that was coming from bullets zipping all around her she ran and hid behind a column, then she peeked out and fired after they had wasted all the bullets blowing the concrete out of the opposite side of the column. One by one all the swat went down, her gun clicked empty and she ran out.  
  
A rebel ran at her and a SWAT knelt behind her to fire, remembering the ease of the jump level she flipped upward so that the SWAT's bullet killed the rebel instead. She landed near him and then jumped again, kicking him with such force that she heard his neck snap.  
  
The SWAT rifle being too big and bulky she grabbed the rebel's handgun and took three more SWAT out and the last by snapping another neck.  
  
All that were left were three rebels. The rebels could move faster but unlike the SWAT didn't wear any body armor so any bullet that made contact meant an injury. The first two were easy but the third, a tall man in a black trench coat threw a knife at her.  
  
Unable to react quickly enough to avoid it, the blade was lodged partly into her upper arm. Seeing that she was hurt he jumped toward her to finish the fight. She rolled out of the way, pulling the knife out, twisting upward she stabbed him in the heart with it as he landed in a three-point crouch where she had been. She twisted it and he stopped moving. He fell forward and she let go of the knife.  
  
She dropped her head back to the floor and closed her eyes for a second before getting back up. She looked around at all the carnage, shaking her head as she let everything that had just happened process. A clock on the wall informed her that the whole battle had in fact taken less than two minutes.  
  
"Very impressive," Smith said stepping back into view. He looked down at one of the bodies and rather than having to step over it, he ordered the simulation to end and all of it disappeared from sight.  
  
Stef shook her head, "but I didn't pass."  
  
Smith looked at her in confusion; "I never said that."  
  
She brandished her arm toward him; "I was injured."  
  
Smith smiled his own slightly strange smile, a not completely wrong expression, "If you survive this level you pass."  
  
She sighed in relief, "well that's good, what else do I have to do?"  
  
"Nothing more, your testing is over."  
  
"That's it? Just those three tests?" She asked incredulously.  
  
"That's it," he confirmed. "You may want to get that looked at," he said referring to her arm, which was staining her sleeve.  
  
Right, she'd been stabbed. Her adrenaline-charged brain was only now getting around to processing the pain, processing the fight had been more of a priority. But then she remembered something, "I thought it wasn't real."  
  
"I thought it wasn't real. I thought nothing was real."  
  
"It hurts doesn't it?"  
  
"Yes..."  
  
"Reality is what you perceive it to be, your arm is bleeding because that's what happens when skin is cut. Some rebels have trained themselves against great pain thresholds. But the rules you were just breaking? Speed and gravity? Those rules are easily broken in the Matrix. Better by human minds than program ones for humans have a habit of breaking and bending rules."  
  
"That's why you need human recruits?"  
  
"Precisely."  
  
"But only strong ones."  
  
"That is why we have these tests. They sort out the unsuitable humans from the suitable recruits," a trickle of blood was now running down her arm. "Unless you plan on bleeding all over this facility I suggest you get that attended to."  
  
"Is there a nurse's office?"  
  
"Because of their habit of getting injured we have a medical facility. And for the less fortunate we have a morgue."  
  
Stef winced from the pain as it was finally starting to register fully, "I'm not ready for the morgue yet." Did he have a sense of humor? The first part of what he had said sounded like a dry joke.  
  
*****  
  
As the Nebuchadnezzar flew through the old sewers of the real world, everyone was having a good night's sleep except for the operator, Tank, who was searching for the potential they had forgivably abandoned. No one wanted to risk fighting an agent for a potential when they could organize for another meeting.  
  
Morpheus climbed into the seat next to the operator and looked blankly at the scrolling code.  
  
"Any luck yet Tank?"  
  
"None. Smith got her then she disappeared. I haven't seen anything since then."  
  
"There was no choice Tank," Morpheus said tiredly, more trying to convince himself than his Zion-born friend.  
  
"I didn't say anything sir. You know what you're doing."  
  
"Keep looking Tank."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Yes Tank?"  
  
"You don't she's going to become a recruit do you? You know they grab some of our potentials."  
  
"I don't believe that anyone that the Oracle found for us would sink so low as to become a traitor. No Tank, I think she can still become one of us."  
  
"Yes sir. I'll tell you as soon as I see anything."  
  
*****  
  
A medical agent, who was a little shorter than Smith and his hair a few shades darker, tended to Stef's shallow flesh wound. She was lucky as it could have been a lot worse.  
  
He finished tying the bandage and looked up at Smith with a nod. "All yours sir."  
  
Smith nodded curtly to him and looked at Stef, "follow me." Stef stood and followed him down yet another similar corridor of the agency. It was going to take a while to get used to, and maybe getting lost a few times before she learnt her way around.  
  
"I thought you said there weren't anymore tests," Stef said with a slight note of accusation in her voice but with one arm injured she wasn't in the mood to take on another set of digital enemies at the moment.  
  
"This isn't a test," he said as they stopped outside of a door. Yet another door, she shook her head, why didn't they just have them all in the same place? "Welcome to the place only one in five hundred recruits get to see." Stef followed him in, not knowing what to expect.  
  
For all she knew it could be the place they kept the Roswell aliens. No, that was Nevada. She stepped in to see...a storeroom. She was slightly disappointed, so far this was the most boring she had seen. But then again, only one in five hundred got to see it, maybe it was special. In a dull kind of way.  
  
But when she looked up and saw the shelf of guns it suddenly got a lot more interesting.  
  
There was a rack of what looked liked hundreds of perfect-condition agent suits. All were hung meticulously waiting for a recruit to claim them. The rows and rows of guns and ammunition and to her amusement, an entire stand of sunglasses.  
  
"Only one in five hundred to the 'last suit you'll ever wear' room? Is that why it smells so dusty?" He just gave her a look. "Right, no dust," she said with a casual shrug.  
  
He turned away and selected a suit for her. "This will fit you."  
  
"Thanks," she said distractedly as she pulled a Desert Eagle off the shelf and slammed a clip into it. After the fight simulator it was already becoming a second nature to her. And this kind of second nature she could handle. "When do I start?"  
  
"As soon as you change. There is an assignment you can take."  
  
"Especially for me?"  
  
He shook his head, "No. It was for whichever recruit made it through the tests or whichever recruit finished their current assignment. Now it's yours."  
  
He handed her the suit and motioned to the changing room. With a nod of thanks she grabbed a pair of sunglasses and stepped in and closed the door. At least in here she had a couple of seconds to think by herself as she changed.  
  
Everything had happened so fast. The contact. Trinity, Morpheus and his speech. The chance of the truth. Smith. Smith wanting to shoot her. Being given the truth she had searched for, for so long. Recruitment. Passing the tests and now this.  
  
She tied the knot on the tie and looked up.  
  
Wow.  
  
Someone she didn't recognize was looking at her from the mirror. The person kind of looked like her, but dressed in a nice suit and a look on her face like she finally knew what was going on and was happy about it. Someone who had been given what she wanted.  
  
Hey, Stef thought, that's me. She smiled and nodded. She stepped back out and looked up at him. 


	3. Chapter 3

"So what's this mission?"  
  
"Assignment," he corrected gently. "There is a computer college on the edge of the city. We have reason to believe that the rebels have taken interest in several of the students there. We need to discover which ones and dissuade them from joining the rebellion."  
  
"When do I start?"  
  
"Now," he said and the world disappeared. Her eyes goggled as it refocused and they were standing in the ground of a college.  
  
"I'm going to have to get used to that," she muttered and looked up at which college it was. She suppressed a chuckle; this was one of the colleges she had actually been considering going to. She looked around at the night time college. There were still quite a few students walking around. "It could be anyone of them."  
  
"They have taken an interest in the general populous as many of these students are hackers who are on the trail of the 'truth'."  
  
"It won't be easy. Look at them, anything Morpheus says to them will draw them in. Freaks, geeks, losers, loners and hackers. He says what they want to hear."  
  
"These people are a stereotype of most of the rebel population before they are taken into the real world."  
  
She looked up at him, "what would have happened if I had taken the Red Pill?"  
  
"You would have woken up in the real world in a pod. You would have been flushed from it once you were disconnected and a hovercraft would have found you. Then it is probable you would have gone to Zion if you survived the shock of the events."  
  
"So my brain is here and my body is in a pod?" She said slowly, trying to comprehend it.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Why a pod? What's the deal?"  
  
Smith sighed, a lot of times when recruits asked this question they had trouble handling the idea. Some had their memories erased and some, in rarer cases had been taken to mental hospitals.  
  
"Are you sure you want to know this?"  
  
"Sure." She said, "I want to know."  
  
"You are a battery. Human beings are batteries. There was a war and the machines won. Human beings are efficient at producing bioelectricity so we take advantage of that. Humans are now grown in fields, the ones in the Matrix anyway, those who leave and become rebels spend the rest of what tends to be a short life as a rebel, entering and leaving this world by phones set up as entry and exit points."  
  
She leant against the fence near them and was very quiet but wasn't that affected. "Recruit Mimosa?" He inquired.  
  
"I'm ok. That kind of came out of left field but it makes sense. At least human beings are doing something useful for once." He gave her a questioning look. "Oh don't be so surprised, I detest human beings."  
  
"Then shall we get on with the mission?"  
  
She smirked, "actually I have an idea."  
  
"You do?"  
  
"To make all these guys avoid them like a virus."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"You got a picture of the rebels?"  
  
"This is a computer simulation, you can have whatever you want."  
  
"You didn't teach me that yet."  
  
"Just clearly think the word 'require' and then the item which you require. It works with everything from photographs to brick walls."  
  
She shook her head, "you really like brick walls don't you?" he didn't respond. She followed his instruction and in her hand appeared a photo with Morpheus and Trinity on it. "Perfect."  
  
"If I may ask, what are you planning on doing?"  
  
"Well, if this photo gets spread around with a good rumor behind it these guys will avoid the rebels like the Tag98 virus."  
  
"This should be interesting, you can continue."  
  
Stef smiled and held out her right hand. In it appeared a long leather jacket. His expression was clearly asking for an explanation, well it did look a great deal like something a rebel would wear.  
  
"These suits might be standard issue, but they will avoid me like the Tag virus instead of the rebels. Hackers and suits don't mix."  
  
She slipped off her Agent jacket and put her new one on. It was a perfect fit, she looked at her suit jacket and made it disappear.  
  
She then walked off into the college ground. She found a guy sitting on the bottom of the stairs of one of the building, engrossed in a thick Batman comic.  
  
"Mr. Bruce Wayne?" she asked to get on his good sign. He looked up at her.  
  
"Can I help you?"  
  
"Are you a hacker?"  
  
"I don't think I should answer that question without a lawyer," he said, suspicious.  
  
"Hey, back off Batman, I'm trying to give you a warning."  
  
"How so?" She dropped the picture down to him.  
  
"You see those two? They are part of this computer cop unit; undercover so we let our guard down. They claim to be Morpheus and Trinity but all they want to do is stick you in jail."  
  
"How'd you get this?"  
  
"Friend of mine. You want to keep it and show it around."  
  
"Yeah, thanks. What should we do if we see them?"  
  
"Don't talk to them and don't believe anything they say."  
  
"Ok."  
  
"Morpheus!" Tank yelled from his seat, after so much sleep depravation it was all worth it, he had found her. The older rebel came in.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"I found the one that got away from you."  
  
He sighed with relief, "good. Where is she?"  
  
"The computer college on the edge of the city." Morpheus nodded and picked the intercom mike, he called down the engine room and told Trinity and Neo to get up there.  
  
"We're all going in," he said.  
  
"Ok Morpheus," Neo said as he nodded at Trinity. Morpheus put the mike back down.  
  
"Sir?" Tank said.  
  
"What is it?" he heard the not-so-good tone in his friend's voice. Tank shook his head, not saying anything and pointed to the monitor on his left, bringing up a clearer view of an area near their potential.  
  
"Shit," Morpheus swore quietly. "We need to get in there now." There was an entrance less than a block from the college so they were there minutes after they arrived in the virtual world.  
  
*****  
  
Stef went back to Smith after she had finished her talk to 'Bruce'. She smiled, "I think the story is going to get around. I don't think many of these guys are going to want to trust the rebels after the story I told this guy."  
  
But he was looking past her, "rebels," he spat. She turned and followed his gaze, picking the dark-clothed rebels from the night. Evidently they had come back for her. How nice after leaving me to die, she muttered in her brain.  
  
Then she got another good idea.  
  
"Point your gun at me," she said to Smith in a whisper.  
  
"What?" he asked in total disbelief. If he had been human a thought similar to 'what the hell is she thinking?' would have been running through his head.  
  
"They've obviously come back to 'rescue' me. Pretend like you're still trying to kill me." He complied with the new recruit's plan, drawing his gun and aiming it at her head. He was frankly surprised that she actually trusted him enough to let him point his gun at her when less than two hours ago he had really been going to shoot her in the head.  
  
It was easy for Stef to pretend to be afraid. All she had to do was recall the gut-freezing fear from a little while ago. Though she hadn't done much drama in high school she was a good actress when called upon, maybe it was because she was a natural liar.  
  
Some of the students who were returning to the campus or hanging around with their friends saw the agent raise his gun and therefore gave them cause to scream and run in terror because of a situation that had nothing to do with them. The rebels came upon the agent and their missing potential.  
  
"Help!" Stef screamed to the rebels - and the general public. To Smith she started babbling inanely for her life. "Please, please don't shoot me. Oh god don't kill me!" Taking the charade where it needed to go, he took a step forward. He needed no practice or acting lessons, he had done this hundreds of time before, except in those cases he had all the intentions of killing the rebel.  
  
Stef tripped on the uneven ground as he took another step toward her. He trained the gun down on her as she looked up at him, the rebels certainly were taking their time. "Goodbye," he said coldly as he went to pull the trigger. She saw someone jump into the air and knock him to the ground.  
  
Someone else grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet as they sprinted across the college ground. She looked over her shoulder to see Morpheus and a tall thin man in a long black coat fighting Smith. Trinity was the one running with her and she was having trouble keeping up.  
  
Speed in a fight wasn't as easy as running over uneven ground if you weren't prepared for it.  
  
Morpheus managed to shoot Smith who left his host and morphed from one of the college lecturers. Instead of running back to immediately join the fight again he held back, wanting to see how well his new recruit handled herself. And how well she had thought this idea of hers out.  
  
And, it was a rare recruit who survived a fight with Anderson.  
  
***  
  
Trinity finally stopped running about three blocks from the college ground. Stef looked around, acting like she had no idea what was going on. "Shouldn't you go back and help them? Who the hell was that guy anyway?"  
  
Trinity gave her a suspicious look, "you mean he didn't say anything?"  
  
"I remember being asked a bunch of questions and then I was here. It's kind of fuzzy," she lied. "Where are we going?"  
  
"We need to get you out of the Matrix. It's not safe for you in here anymore, the agents know about you."  
  
"Agents?"  
  
"Ones like him. They are our enemies." Neo said as he and Morpheus came running up to them.  
  
"Who are you?" She asked the stranger.  
  
"My name is Neo."  
  
For half a second her computer-nerd side took over and she looked up at him. "You're Neo?" Neo was another name among the great hackers of the time. Living legends.  
  
Then the geeky innocence was gone. Legend? He was just another rebel. Trying to destroy the world. Another enemy.  
  
"I am. We have to go now."  
  
"Where? Where are you taking me?"  
  
"I told you," Trinity said. "You have to get out of the Matrix." Then the group started to walk along. Soon, they came to an old and dilapidated building.  
  
Going through to a back room it was pretty much the same set up as the room that the rebels had jumped from only hours before. There must have been dozens of these rooms across the entire city. If not the whole world. The only difference in this one was that the phone was ringing.  
  
"I'll go out and tell Tank to be ready," Morpheus said as he picked up the ringing phone. Smith's words jolted her, about them using phones to enter and exit the Matrix. She whipped out her gun and fired at Morpheus. It was too late though, the bullets harmlessly going through his disappearing form.  
  
The other two sets of eyes stared at her. "Traitor!" Trinity spat as she pulled out her gun.  
  
"Recruit," Stef affirmed and shot at her, the bullet missed the rebel but got her gun. Trinity flung the hunk of useless metal to the ground and went to attack. Neo held her back and pointed to the phone.  
  
"Go," he ordered. "I'll deal with her."  
  
Trinity fixed a glare on her but picked up the phone as it rang. Neo stared at her behind dark glasses. Then he moved too quickly for her to see. She tried shooting at him but her gun was knocked out of her hand and was flung across the room.  
  
She fought him but a solid hit to the stomach left her gasping for air and then he kicked her, she went down, hitting her head on the table as she went. She laid still on the floor, still very much alive but in too much pain to move just yet.  
  
By the way he was fighting, he wasn't going to let her walk away. She heard his footsteps behind her as he came to see whether she was still alive or not. Require, no physical vital signs. She thought loudly, unsure if a request like that would even process. Hoping it would work she stayed absolutely still.  
  
She heard the rustle of Neo's coat as he leant down and checked to see if she still had a pulse.  
  
Not finding one, he picked up the ringing phone and left in the secure knowledge that he had dealt with another traitor.  
  
She couldn't hear him so she knew he was gone, but she didn't feel like getting up. It was too nice here on the cold floor. She was sick, tired and beat up. She hadn't been allowed five minutes to slow down since meeting Trinity on the corner of River and Dale so if it was ok with the world in general she was going to stay exactly where she was.  
  
But, her rest was interrupted again. Someone else bent down and checked her pulse. "A waste," she heard Smith mutter.  
  
She grinned and sat up, "I'm not dead."  
  
Smith took a half step back, "as it would appear."  
  
"Sorry for leaving with them but I didn't really have much choice in the matter. And I figured they might bring me to somewhere like this so I thought it might be good to get rid of another one."  
  
"Well that was good thinking on your part. Places like these often elude us."  
  
"I did good?" she asked.  
  
"Yes. And you survived a fight with Anderson which is unusual for a recruit without backup."  
  
"Survived yes, but I feel like shit." She paused, "Why don't they survive?"  
  
"Anderson. Neo as you might know him. Is what the rebels call 'The One'? He is merely an anomaly who can manipulate the Matrix much more than a normal recruit or rebel."  
  
"Ok."  
  
"How many recruits are there now?"  
  
"Six, including you, but the number has ranged up to thirty in certain ages in the past. We have been recruiting for fifty-four years now."  
  
She looked up at him seriously, "how many has he killed?"  
  
"Twelve that we know of, it may be more as more than as there are not always survivors to report which rebel dispatched which recruit."  
  
"Well I'm glad I didn't make his total thirteen, and I don't plan on being his next victim." She painfully pulled off her jacket and could feel some bruises forming already. She went to require her suit jacket to put back on but she stopped.  
  
She held her hands a little away from her body and put a look of concentration on her face. Her suit jacket appeared on her, without having to put it on and button it up. She smirked. "What now?"  
  
"There will be nothing further tonight."  
  
The world around them blurred again and they were standing in another hallway of the Agency. He walked up to a door with a small number thirteen on it. "This is your room," he said. "All recruits are given a room like this one, just require anything else that you need."  
  
"Thank you." He nodded and walked away. Thirteen, what a lucky number. But maybe it was hers, her birthday was on the thirteenth. Luck was different for everyone. She shut the door behind her, locked it and looked around.  
  
It was a spacious self-contained unit. There was a bathroom and shower, a small kitchenette, bed and enough space to put a few more items of furniture.  
  
She peeled off her jacket and collapsed on the bed. Tonight had been too much to handle. She stood and required some pajamas. She looked at the bruises on her arms and the small cut on her head that wasn't bleeding anymore. She knew she should hurt a lot more but it didn't, maybe because she knew it wasn't real.  
  
She dumped her uniform in the corner; she could require it away in the morning. She clicked off the lamp and finally allowed herself to rest.  
  
She was woken the next morning by someone knocking incessantly on it. Shaking her head she pulled herself out of bed and opened it. "Yes?"  
  
"You're the new recruit?" the guy at the door asked. Like the recruits she had seen before the tests last night he wasn't in a suit, but instead a tracksuit.  
  
"Yeah," she said, "I'm Stef Mimosa."  
  
"Curt O'Connor. Were you going to stay in here all day?"  
  
"I just got here last night, I don't know how it works yet."  
  
"Well you can have breakfast by yourself or you can come join the rest of us." He offered.  
  
She thought on it for a moment, human interaction wasn't her strong point. But these people were recruits so maybe they were on the same wavelength as her. "Ok."  
  
He smiled, "good. Come on."  
  
She frowned, "I'm in my pajamas."  
  
"Require a tracksuit and come on." She looked down at herself and required herself into a tracksuit. It was comfortable, a black, white and gray spray jacket and black pants. Underneath was a black tee shirt. She ran a hand through her hair and nodded.  
  
"It's this way."  
  
She followed him to a large room at the end of the hall. There were some tables in the middle of it and the other four recruits were already eating. "Guys this is Stef," he said to the others. "Stef, this is Enid, Jack, Quart and Lisa." All the recruits nodded to her and she sat next to Lisa and across from Curt.  
  
"So which one?" Curt asked her.  
  
"Which one what?"  
  
"Which agent recruited you?" Quart said in a everyone-should-know-what-he- means voice.  
  
"Smith."  
  
"Jones got me," Curt said after he required some Cocopops. "I was at school and somehow a fire got started, I was trapped in the computer lab so I had no choice but jump from the window. I was on the fifth floor, I jumped out and didn't have a scratch on me. He had been looking for another recruit but he found me instead."  
  
Enid spoke next. Among this group it was tradition to share how they had become recruits, but that wasn't the same for all the groups of recruits or different agencies, each had their own ways. "These guys were bothering me. Four guys like who were all like a foot taller than me, Brown found me at the police station where I was giving a statement. I beat the shit out them without even trying." Stef smiled, someone with Enid's slight frame wasn't the kind of person you expected to be able to do that.  
  
But then again, mind really did work over matter, or muscle, or speed in this world.  
  
Jack and Quart told their story, they had been petty thieves who had managed to scale the sheer side of a building and had been recruited by Brown soon after. Although he held no stock in recruits, Brown's logic was that at least he could have strong ones.  
  
Lisa was mute by choice, she spoke to the agents out of respect but to the other recruits and humans in general she used sign language. Stef didn't understand it so Enid summarized it for her. Lisa had survived a school shooting where she had seen all of her best friends shot dead, she had survived by dodging the bullets. She was another of Jones'.  
  
She looked at the group, three were Brown's recruits and two were Jones'. She was Smith's only recruit. So she decided to ask, "doesn't Smith have any other recruits?"  
  
"Usually he does."  
  
"Is it because of the test statistics?"  
  
Enid scoffed, "I think those numbers are faked. Usually one of three gets it, so I don't know where they get the one in five hundred shit."  
  
Stef shrugged and Curt spoke, "Smith's last recruit was shot last week. A guy named Leon was killed by Neo."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Enid spoke in a whisper just loud enough for them to hear, "I think Smith sicks his recruits onto Neo and his gang, you know like attack dogs." Then in a normal voice, "stay as far away from Neo as you can if you want to live."  
  
"Yeah, I know he's dangerous. I met him last night." Everyone stopped eating and looked at her.  
  
"But you had Smith with you..." Quart started.  
  
"No."  
  
"You're lying, no one takes him on by themselves."  
  
"I didn't know who he was."  
  
"If it was you by yourself, and you had only been a recruit for a couple of hours how in hell did you survive?"  
  
Quart shook his head, "I think she's lying. She's trying to make herself sound good."  
  
"Why would I do that?" she asked defensively.  
  
"To impress us."  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
Lisa made a sign with her hand that no one needed to translate.  
  
"Fine," Stef spat. "If you think I'm lying then screw you. I don't need this, I don't need you. I don't need friends, I have never needed friends." She shook her head and walked out of the room. She wasn't upset, frankly it didn't surprise her. It was human nature. Yet another thing she hated about the species she unfortunately belonged to.  
  
"I am not taking a patrol with her," she heard Quart say and a couple of the other recruits agreed. She shrugged it off and went back toward her room.  
  
Smith was walking down the hall toward her. "You met the other recruits I assume?"  
  
"Yeah," she said casually.  
  
"There is a rebel downstairs. You are to interrogate her."  
  
"Me? What do I know about interrogation?"  
  
"All recruits are given a chance to interrogate a low-ranking rebel to see how they handle it. You came up with an idea very quickly last night, let's see if you can repeat that."  
  
"I'll try. Anything specific I'm supposed to trying to find out?"  
  
"Because of her low rank she won't know anything important but if we can learn the location of her ship the Sentinels can destroy it and that will be one less for their fleet."  
  
"Ship?"  
  
"Hovercrafts specifically. The rebels use hovercrafts to find places to hack into the Matrix."  
  
"Oh, ok."  
  
"Do I ask her questions and write down the answers? How are you supposed to find out what she says?"  
  
He required something and handed it to her, a small microphone about two inches long. "Take this and anything that is said will be transmitted back to us."  
  
"Well that seems simple enough."  
  
He looked at what she was wearing. "Your suit is standard attire during an interrogation."  
  
She looked up at him; "actually I have a different idea."  
  
"And that would be...?" She concentrated for a second. Smith watched on, one moment there was a tidily dressed agent recruit standing in front of him and she was wearing a battered and torn set of black clothes. "Care to explain?" He asked as he looked at her new attire.  
  
"Well I'm guessing she'll never tell me anything if she thinks I'm a recruit. But if she thinks I'm a rebel like her, she won't her guard as high."  
  
"Very well." On the way down to the cellblock she explained the rest of what she had planned.  
  
***  
  
The rebel, a woman named Athena stood and walked to the bars of her cell when she heard the cellblock door open. She saw what she thought was another rebel being half-dragged, half-led by Smith.  
  
Stef was really getting into the part; she was screaming curses at the agent and threatening him. Athena allowed a small smile, all she could muster given her hopeless situation. But she had to smile at the unknown rebel, she was exceedingly brave to be cursing at Smith.  
  
Agent Smith, deadliest agent of them all. The one that everyone in the rebellion feared.  
  
Athena herself hadn't been brave enough to say anything when she had been captured. Smith grabbed a handful of Stef's hair and yanked her head back to hold her still while he opened the cell door.  
  
"That hurts," she muttered and he let her go a little, but not by a noticeable amount that the rebel would see. Athena, for perhaps half a second had thought of trying to escape as the door opened but a dark look from Smith quelled those thoughts and promised a quick death if she acted on them.  
  
Letting her hair go, he grabbed Stef by both of her shoulders and shoved her into the small cell. Stef landed roughly on the floor and hit her head. "Jerk!" she yelled at him. The comment sounded in character, but he shouldn't have pushed her so hard.  
  
He slammed the cell door and walked away. Athena immediately helped her to her feet and guided her to the spare bunk. "Are you ok?" Athena asked with genuine concern.  
  
"Sure I guess," she said as she rubbed the back of her head. She'd have to pay him back for that.  
  
"He could have killed you."  
  
"I'm not afraid of him," Stef was able to say truthfully but it backed up Athena's theory that she was fearless.  
  
She truly wasn't afraid of him, Stef realized. The night before he had been quite willing to put a bullet in her skull but for some reason she trusted him.  
  
"I'm Athena."  
  
"You can call me Unseen. Short for Unseen Spyder."  
  
"I don't know of you. Are you new?"  
  
"Yeah, you could say that."  
  
"I just hope we can get out of here before we get our plugs pulled."  
  
Plugs? Stef didn't understand. Lucky the rebel was in a talkative mood.  
  
"I'll never forget how my captain explained it," she took on a somber pose. "You see this plug? We're going to stick it in the plug in your skull. Then your mind gets loaded into the Matrix. If your plug comes out before your mind. Game over kiddo."  
  
"Harsh."  
  
"Yeah, it's the truth," she paused. "Everyone knows the rule though, you talk, you get your plugged pulled."  
  
"So where's your ship?" Stef asked casually.  
  
"Why would you want to know that?" Athena retorted suspiciously.  
  
"I'm just making conversation," Stef said holding up her hands, showing that she meant no harm. "I just need to think about something besides the blinding pain in my head."  
  
Athena sighed, "I'm sorry. But you...you know what's going to happen to us. What happens to everyone who gets caught by the agents. We're going to die Unseen, I'm just having trouble processing that."  
  
"Death is a part of life. You can't hide from it."  
  
"How can you be so unfeeling?"  
  
"Practice," Stef said coldly. "I don't have anyone, so why should I care what happens to me?"  
  
"That's not a good attitude to have."  
  
"Sorry," Stef said, wishing that last statement had been something that she was making up.  
  
"My ship is below the 347 pods. Where's yours?"  
  
"In the fields," she said quoting the only location she knew in the real world.  
  
Athena's eyes went wide. "The fields? Damn you must have a good pilot."  
  
"He's the best. Devil may care pilot and all round good guy."  
  
"That sounds familiar."  
  
Stef smothered a smirk and the urge to hum the 'Roger Ramjet' theme song. "Maybe you heard someone else say it," she said with a perfectly straight face.  
  
Athena shrugged, "probably."  
  
They talked for about half an hour more before Athena's head violently jerked and her body fell backward limply like a puppet whose strings had been cut.  
  
Stef had her suit back on by the time Smith opened the door. "They found her ship," he said as Stef stepped out of the cell.  
  
"Sorry she didn't know much but I tried my best. Some more taken care of at the very least."  
  
"For your first interrogation...it was slightly unorthodox but acceptable." He gave her a half smile; "you are proving to be a worthwhile recruit."  
  
"Thanks. Maybe if you didn't sick all your recruits on Neo you'd find out that we are worth the trouble." She felt bad the instant the words were out of her mouth, sometimes her mouth worked faster than her brain. "I'm sorry sir that was out of line."  
  
"I do not 'sick' my recruits onto Anderson. Whoever told you that was lying."  
  
"I should have suspected so. It came from a human."  
  
"Recruit do you genuinely despise your species?"  
  
"Yes." She said then smirked, "humans suck, it says so on the tee shirt I was going to buy." Smith gave a slight chuckle and Stef smiled. He did have a sense of humor. 


	4. Chapter 4

As there was nothing else to do, Stef went to the gym to practice. The only other person in there was Curt.  
  
"Hey," he said and she shrugged. She required her jacket away and jumped up onto the balancing beam, steadying herself with her hands, she stood.  
  
"I'm not mad at you," he said.  
  
"I don't care if you are."  
  
"I know you didn't lie."  
  
"So why didn't you say something?" she asked as she closed her eyes and jumped up into the air. Coming back down, she missed the beam, but landed in a crouch as to not hurt herself. "Well?" she asked him.  
  
"They wouldn't have believed me."  
  
"Is he really that unbeatable?"  
  
"Yeah, he is." He smiled, "so there is anything you're skilled in? Speed, strength, gravity?"  
  
"I've been here less than a day Curt. I really don't know."  
  
"The key thing is to remember that none of this is real." He smiled and rose about a foot off the floor.  
  
"How did you do that?"  
  
"Just extend the jump. Jump, but then hold it if that makes sense."  
  
"Think happy thoughts?"  
  
"If it helps you."  
  
She concentrated, then forget about the rules of gravity and rose off the floor. "Cool." She rose higher, then flipped backward and fell slowly back down to the balancing beam.  
  
"You're a natural at this."  
  
"Well the jump test was pretty easy." She leapt fifteen feet up and held herself there for a moment before landing softly at the other end.  
  
"No need to show off golden girl." He said spitefully.  
  
"Hey what's your deal?"  
  
"You're hogging the balancing beam."  
  
"Sorry," she said sarcastically and she hopped off.  
  
"You see," he said as he walked along it. "Walking this fine line is like walking the fine line between rebel and recruit."  
  
"What are you talking about? They are the opposite sides of the war."  
  
"Separated only by one choice. Tell me Stef, what pill were you going to take?"  
  
"That's none of your business."  
  
"Oh, but I can guess. Red pill. It's the truth, it's what you wanted. But instead, you're here like the other recruits, choosing this world over the truth."  
  
"But we know the truth."  
  
"Recruits know only what the agents choose to tell them. There are things that the recruits will never know that the rebels are told."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"What matters is," he lifted his right foot and slammed it down on the beam, snapping it in half and jumping down. "This isn't the truth. You chose the lie."  
  
"I chose what I believe in."  
  
"Then you are deluded. I really thought I had a chance with you, you were found right before you made you decision. A lot of the other recruits only ever hear the agent's point of view. You've heard both, what do you think of my side of the war?"  
  
"You're a rebel." She breathed.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"But your loyalties were tested, you passed the tests."  
  
"Are you talking about killing the simulation? Was that actually supposed to be a test?"  
  
"You traitor."  
  
"No Stef, you're the traitor. I'm going to give you one last chance to join the right side of the war and get out of this lie."  
  
She shot at him.  
  
Whipping the gun out of thin air she had fired on him, hoping to kill him. But he was too fast, dodging it and requiring a gun of his own he fired at her. She jumped around avoiding the bullets from each other's guns until they stood with their guns held at each other.  
  
"You're empty," she said.  
  
"Yeah...so are you."  
  
Another shot rang out in the gym.  
  
"But this one isn't," she said blowing the smoke off the gun she had required in her left hand. His body landed with a thump and she looked down in distaste at him.  
  
"Traitor."  
  
"What happened here?" Smith's severe voice asked from the door of the gym. She turned to look at him.  
  
"Curt was a traitor."  
  
"He was a what?"  
  
"Rebel. Was this another test?"  
  
"No. How do you know he was a rebel?"  
  
"It may have had something to do with the fact he tried to convert me over to the rebel's side and when I declined he tried to shoot me."  
  
"Ah." He paused, "are you injured?"  
  
"No, Jones will be pissed off though." She said flippantly, not even sure it was possible for an agent to get 'pissed off'.  
  
"He was a well trained deceiver if he lasted this long. If he could infiltrate to this level..." He trailed off and looked at Stef with more than a hint of accusation.  
  
"Me? Do you think I'm a traitor? I was the one who killed him."  
  
"You might be the rebel and he may have been going to expose your secret."  
  
"Oh come on. Don't you have security cameras or something?"  
  
"There is a security system yes. For events such as these."  
  
"Then check it. I don't want you thinking I'm a traitor. Trust me, I wouldn't betray the Agency."  
  
"Agents don't trust Miss Mimosa."  
  
The world blurred and then they were standing in his office. He sat in his chair and typed something on his keyboard. "How long ago did the fight start?"  
  
"Go back five minutes and you'll catch everything." She said as she sat down in the chair across from him. He started to watch it.  
  
She reached her hand up to her head and held it. It was starting to hurt.  
  
"Fine, he was the rebel," he said a minute later and he looked over at her. She had both her hands pressed to her head and she was quietly rocking back and forth in pain.  
  
"Recruit?"  
  
"Hurts..." she whispered. "Really, really hurts." She grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, it hurt to much to talk, that was why she hadn't asked for help.  
  
"You said you weren't injured."  
  
"I wasn't," she said and she jerked her head back. The chair toppled over and she fell to the ground. "Stupid brain tumor!" she screamed.  
  
"You don't have a tumor. It would have been on your file."  
  
"I don't know what the hell is wrong! My head is going to explode!" He went over to her and helped her to her feet and shifted them both to the medical facility. She collapsed on the nearest bed and kept her hands locked to her head, hoping the pain would go away.  
  
The doctor pulled her right arm away from her head and injected her with something. It calmed her immediately, her other hand detaching from her head and dropping to her side, she relaxed back on the bed and breathed deeply, still in pain.  
  
He gave her another shot and she fell unconscious.  
  
She roused a matter of hours later, it was late early in the evening according to the clock. "I have discovered what is wrong with you," the medical agent said.  
  
"Well what is it? What's wrong with me?" She asked as she sat up and let her legs dangle off the side of the bed.  
  
"Quite simply," he said, "your real world body is dying."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You came from a bad crop."  
  
"It happens sometimes when something goes wrong the growing process in the fields. If it is any comfort around a thousand others have the same problem. None of them have any idea that this is wrong with them. They could die at any time."  
  
"Thanks..." she muttered not putting any feeling behind the world. "Do I have to stay here?"  
  
"No. You are free to go. But if you experience any more symptoms come back and I can give you another shot."  
  
She felt very odd as she returned to her room. Like she wasn't part of the world anymore. Well she wouldn't be for much longer, she realized bitterly. She was calm until she shut and locked the door of her room.  
  
Then she started shaking.  
  
She was going to die.  
  
She wasn't crying though. She didn't want to cry, there was nothing to cry about. It was just the end of her life.  
  
It wasn't like it mattered, she didn't have anyone who would miss her or anyone that she would miss.  
  
And she wasn't afraid. She knew all about death.  
  
It was just so...final.  
  
And it wasn't fair.  
  
She punched the wall as hard as she could, expecting some kind of pain that would take this numbness away. Maybe she was just in shock. The one thing she did know was that she was angry, very angry.  
  
The wall gave easily under the force of her punches and soon her anger was spent on destroying the wall. There were pieces of plaster and wood strewn all around her room. Her knuckles and fingers were red and screaming in pain but she didn't feel it.  
  
Collapsing on the bed she looked around blankly.  
  
Someone knocked on the door. "Go away, come in, I don't care," she said loud enough for whoever-it-was to hear. The knob twisted and Smith walked in.  
  
"Bad news I assume," he said as he walked in and closed the door behind him.  
  
"Yeah I'll say," she said sitting up with a heavy sigh. "I'm dying. My real world body came from a bad crop or something like according to the doctor."  
  
"Bad crops do happen. Not as often as they used to though." He looked up at the wall and the small pieces of debris, he made a requirement and it was all fixed and the debris gone.  
  
"Gee, that's wonderful. Doesn't help me though." She scowled, "this sucks. I finally find something that I'm good at and now I'm going to die."  
  
"I could make it painless if you want." He stated simply and she looked up at him. No matter how strange the offer sounded, he had intended it to be kind.  
  
"Are you offering to kill me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Well if it's any worse than that headache I had before I will gladly accept." She paused, he had just offered to end her life and she had politely accepted. The world was getting stranger by the second. "Painless would be nice," she said with a slight shake in her voice.  
  
Smith sat down beside her and held out his right hand, a second later a steaming white mug appeared in it.  
  
"What's that?" she asked curiously. As far as she had gathered though Agents didn't eat or drink.  
  
He handed it to her, "it's warm milk. Psychological studies of humans have determined that it has certain calmative properties."  
  
"Thank you," she said as she started to drink it. He was right, it did help.  
  
"Did you want to leave the Agency? Knowing what you do now?"  
  
"Why?"  
  
Her question confused him, "in cases like this Recruits are given the choice to leave and spend their remaining time with friends or family."  
  
"That's nice...I don't have any of either. I think I'll stay here, do as much good as I can while I'm still around."  
  
"That's your final choice?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"All right," he rose to leave. As he reached for the door handle she had another question for him.  
  
"Is there anyway...anyway I can find out how much time I have left?"  
  
"No," he said. "Deaths caused by real world errors are unpredictable. I'm sorry."  
  
"Can I tell you something really stupid?" she blurted before he could leave.  
  
"If you wish."  
  
"Remember I said I remembered you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Well...I was like two at the time so my brain didn't register you as an agent."  
  
She paused; knowing how stupid this was going to sound. He probably wouldn't understand. "You fixed my doll. I thought you were an angel." She smirked, "Smith, Angel Smith."  
  
He smiled a genuine smile, "that's an interesting interpretation."  
  
"I thought you were going to think it was stupid."  
  
"It's a refreshing change."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Almost everyone else thinks that I am a cold, heartless killing machine."  
  
"Isn't that what agents are?"  
  
"Yes." He stopped talking and looked down at her, as if unsure to say anything further.  
  
"Whatever you were going to say I won't repeat it to anyone else."  
  
"Our programming is adaptive. It is possible for a program to become more than what it was originally intended to be."  
  
"I can understand that." She said with a yawn.  
  
"Did the doctor tell you to rest?"  
  
"No, but I guess it's expected."  
  
"Then goodnight."  
  
"Smith?" She asked as he opened the door, he turned back toward her. "Is it ok to be scared?"  
  
"Yes." He said then walked away, closing the door behind him.  
  
The she cried herself to sleep.  
  
With a scream she woke up a few hours later. She pulled herself out of her sheet that she had become tangled in during her fitful sleep. She made it to the bathroom where she threw up then she leant back against the cool tiled wall.  
  
It hadn't been a dream, it had been a nightmare. A suffocating, dark murky blue-black space that she couldn't find her way out of, then it had become so bright it was burning her eyes and the headache had come again.  
  
Thankfully it hadn't followed her into the waking world.  
  
She required a cool glass of water and tried to relax but found no sanctuary from her thoughts. It was all too real. Her gaze looked back to her bed.  
  
No.  
  
She didn't want to go back to sleep, she knew if she went back to sleep she was going to die. She didn't want to be asleep when it happened.  
  
Even if there wasn't much point sticking around it wasn't something she was just going to accept without a fight.  
  
She required her suit and walked out of her room. The Agency was quiet this time of night. Then again, most of its occupants were asleep and she doubted the agents held loud parties in the early hours of the morning.  
  
Did the agents sleep? An interesting question but she doubted they did, they probably needed to be online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week so they could patrol, hunt and kill rebels.  
  
She found her way to Smith's office and knocked on the door. "Come in," he said. He looked up with a mild surprise as he saw who it was. "It is two thirty-seven am, most humans are asleep at this hour."  
  
"I know that." She walked across and sat in the chair. "Is there something I can do?"  
  
"In what context?"  
  
"An assignment, a patrol, a...something so I don't have sit around and think about my impending death. And I don't want to go back to sleep cause I'm afraid I won't wake up. I don't mean to dump all this on you but you remind me of my IT teacher, really easy to talk to."  
  
"Assignments and patrols usually aren't done at this hour. Recruits with insomnia usually find ways to amuse themselves or practice in the gym."  
  
His computer beeped, he looked away from her and over to it. "What is it?" she asked as his expression changed.  
  
"It's the Nebuchadnezzar."  
  
"The what?" she exclaimed, wondering if had just made that word up.  
  
"It's the ship that Anderson and Morpheus are on."  
  
"What about it?"  
  
"They have just hacked into the Matrix."  
  
She shut her eyes and was silent for a little while. Smith was just about to inquire her headaches were coming back when she opened them and smiled. "I've got an idea."  
  
"Are you aware it doesn't take you more than thirty-two seconds to come up with a viable idea?"  
  
"No I didn't, thanks for telling me."  
  
"What is your idea now?"  
  
"Wait, I've got a few questions first."  
  
"Such as?"  
  
"Is it possible for someone not in the rebellion to communicate with their world?"  
  
"Only to certain ships. Each one has a different phone number, when they come in this number is programmed into a cell phone that they carry. If we retrieve a phone we make notes of the number before discarding it."  
  
"Have you got the Neb-buck-had-whatever's number?"  
  
"Yes. So what are you thinking?"  
  
"Well I'm going to attempt to kill whoever hacked into the Matrix."  
  
"How?"  
  
"I'm going to ring the ship and tell whoever picks up to send them over to meet me."  
  
"And why would a rebel willingly meet an agent recruit?"  
  
"Because I am going to pretend to defect."  
  
"I don't think they will fall for that."  
  
"Trust me Smith, I think they will."  
  
"Agent don't..."  
  
"Trust me Smith," she said again and he gave a slight nod. "They are going to fall for it."  
  
"What do you need?"  
  
"Just the phone number, I'll take care of the rest."  
  
*****  
  
On the Nebuchadnezzar, Morpheus was still fuming about their potential being a recruit. "I can't believe that the Oracle gave us false advice."  
  
"Calm down Morpheus, not even she can see everything," Trinity said.  
  
Morpheus relented, "maybe this has served some higher purpose. Maybe it is a good thing we did not keep her, she may have turned into another Cypher."  
  
"Operator," he heard Tank say.  
  
"Is it Neo?" Trinity asked.  
  
"No..." he said slowly. "I think you had better take this Tank," he said as he pulled off the headset and handed it to his captain.  
  
"Tank? Who is it?" He asked as he put it on.  
  
"Tank...what an original name," he heard Stef say.  
  
"Traitor," he hissed.  
  
"Not anymore. I want to defect."  
  
"You want to what?"  
  
"Did you hear me? I want to defect, I want to join the side I belong on."  
  
"Give me one reason I should trust you."  
  
***  
  
Stef was walking down the street holding a newly required cell phone, looking around at the lights on the buildings for she might not get a chance to see them again.  
  
"Your insider has been killed, did you know that?"  
  
"C-it?"  
  
"Was that Curt's alias?"  
  
"Yes. How did he die?"  
  
"Smith shot him. He was talking to me, telling me things about the resistance's side of the war. He got one straight through the temple. I just haven't seen the Agency the same way since."  
  
"It's not too easy on this side either."  
  
"Yeah...but I think you would give someone a chance to explain themselves before ending their life."  
  
"You do realize that if this is a trick we will kill you. We don't put up with traitors any more than your people do."  
  
"They aren't my people. Not anymore. Can someone come and get me, I want to escape wonderland."  
  
Before he could give her an answer a pain shot through her head and she dropped to her knees as she felt a pain in her gut. Wrapping both of her arms around her middle she rocked back and forth and hoped it would go away.  
  
She gave it a moment and although it didn't dull completely, it was better than what it had been. She reached for the cell phone, which she had dropped.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I'm not exactly sure. Can I meet someone somewhere before they find out I'm missing and defecting?"  
  
"Neo is in there at the moment. He'll be able to get you to an exit."  
  
"Where do I meet him?"  
  
"Fourth and Orion. Be there in ten minutes."  
  
"I will." She made her way to the corner that the rebel had specified, she made it there in about seven minutes but Neo was already waiting for her.  
  
The rebel was dressed in his trademark black coat and sunglasses, she wondered how he could see with them on in the lowly lit night. He shook his head at her as she approached. "If this is a trick I will finish you off and this time I won't be tricked."  
  
"I'm not going to try anything, I promise." She said, lying with a slight smile that was supposed to reassure him.  
  
"We have saved some others like you," he said as they walked toward an exit for first-timers. "Some that chose to stay in this dream a little while longer. Some that chose the lie before seeing the light."  
  
"I guess I'm one of those." She said as she winced in pain, she could feel it building up again.  
  
The doctor's words came back to her; "a thousand others have the same problem. None of them have any idea that this is wrong with them. They could die at any time."  
  
Any time. She knew her time was going to be soon, very soon judging by the pain. It had never been quite this bad before. It had always been headaches, or splitting seconds of pain but never a constant pain like this.  
  
He led her into a room, yet another exit. She inhaled sharply as a pain shot through her. She had been right, if she had of been asleep she would have died in her sleep, unless the pain had woken her.  
  
But, no matter what, she was glad she was awake.  
  
Time to do what she had come here to do.  
  
She took a deep breath to focus herself then required a gun. She shot the phone first so he couldn't escape then shot at him. To her surprise he didn't try and dodge the volley of bullets, he simply held up his hand and they stopped just in front of his hand.  
  
He smirked darkly then lowered his hand and the bullets dropped. She dropped her gun as he started to walk toward her, "I could have guessed you were still a traitor. It ends now."  
  
She required another gun but before she could shoot again he ripped it out of her hand and grabbed her by her throat with his left hand and threw her back against the wall. She looked at him but before she could move he pulled the trigger.  
  
She looked down and saw a hole in her tee shirt and it was rapidly getting dark with blood from her stomach. He fired again and then punched her in the face. She fell down to the ground and saw her first gun just across from her.  
  
She was sure she hadn't fired all the bullets from it.  
  
She flung her hand toward it at the same time that he fired the third shot. But the world blurred and she found herself in a bright place. No, it wasn't the non-existent beyond, it was the medical facility.  
  
She collapsed back to the floor, and gently reached her hand across to her stomach, feeling the blood there. Maybe it was the shock, but she couldn't register the pain of the shots.  
  
Then the headache came again, worse than ever. And then she felt pain in her guts, but not like she had been shot, it felt more like she was being eaten from the inside. She looked around at what she could see through pain- blurred eyes.  
  
"Real world body failure," she heard the voice of the doctor say.  
  
Her eyes fixed onto Smith who was standing near her. "Painless," she pleaded as her body went to hell. "Painless please." She started to write in pain, trying to fend it off as much as she could.  
  
She looked up at him and saw he had drawn his gun that he was now training down on her. "Are you sure?" he asked softly.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Angel of death or of mercy. Maybe he was both.  
  
He fired a single shot.  
  
***  
  
Emma walked out to the living room and found her two year old standing on a chair pulling a book off the shelf.  
  
"Stephanie I thought I told you to go to sleep."  
  
"Didn't mean to wake you."  
  
"What could you possibly be doing at this hour?"  
  
"I wanted to find my angel," she said as she found the book she was looking for. It was Emma's book of angels.  
  
"I don't think your angel will be in there Stef."  
  
"Can we have a look anyway?"  
  
Emma nodded and picked up Stef and the book and took her back into her room. She flicked on the lamp and opened the book so Stef could see the pictures as well. "You see there's lots of different angels and different types of angel."  
  
"What types?"  
  
"Well first of all there's your guardian angel, we all have one of those. Then there is an angel of death, but you don't need to worry about those ones for a very long time yet. And then there is the angel of mercy who comes to you in a time of need and helps you."  
  
"He helped me, he fixed my doll."  
  
"Do you think you can go to sleep now Stef? There's nothing to worry about."  
  
"I'm not worried."  
  
Emma leant down and kissed her forehead, "just close your eyes and go to sleep."  
  
***  
  
Everything stopped and went black.  
  
"Morgue," Smith stated simply before turning and walking out of the medical bay.  
  
One month later.  
  
Smith, Jones and Brown were waiting in Smith's office to meet the new agent. Since new agents were a rarity they were expected by the mainframe to meet them. A few minutes later they heard footsteps outside the door, it opened a woman walked through.  
  
Brown walked away and looked even more displeased than normal. He was quite unhappy with the new agent for a good number of reasons, though he kept most of them to himself.  
  
Jones was silently pleased with the fact that the time he had spent assisting the mainframe with the programming of the new agent hadn't been in vain. She seemed to be fully operational.  
  
Smith stepped forward to greet the new agent. "Agent Smith," she said with the slightest hint of a smile.  
  
"Welcome Agent Mimosa," Smith said betraying the slight hint of a smile as well.  
  
The End. 


End file.
